Local organization My Brother’s Keeper steps up during COVID-19 crisis
COLUMBUS (WCMH) — Moving to online schooling has been an adjustment for students across the country but for some, it’s been more of a challenge than merely a change of pace. That could be due to a lack of resources, or due to a lack of support.
In Columbus, the My Brother’s Keeper Village (MBK) organization has stepped up to help boys and young men of color stay on track and organized during this time of disarray.
“They’ve been like really great motivators for me,” said Genesis Cochran-Pinkett, a senior at South High School who has been participating with MBK for the last four years. “They’ve been tutoring me, they’ve been getting me focused on my grades, they’ve been checking in on at me at school whenever they feel I’m off track.”
It would’ve been easy to get off track when COVID-19 hit and school went online for Genesis’ final months in high school. But the mentors at MBK made sure that didn’t happen with the new Stay Connected program: a way to support boys and young men of color as they adapt to e-learning.
“They’ve been giving me a tutoring system. Charles and Lorenzo, they’ve been coming in and checking on me saying, Are you doing your work?’ Making sure you’re okay,” Genesis said. “Also, with my mental health they’ve been saying we get on a Zoom, we do mindfulness and we sit there and meditate with each other and have a good time. And we also, on certain Mondays, do a sit down and work out with each other making sure our physical health is in tact too.”
“Too often boys and men of color kind of get forgotten about. So, with this campaign, we wanted to bring awareness,” said Chris Suel, the program manager at MBK. “We also wanted to bring virtual resources to ensure future success for boys and men of color.”
Suel said moving to more online programs is something MBK already discussed, and then COVID-19 forced them to put their plan into action. While the classroom tools have been critical for the students moving to online learning, the virtual programs and activities go beyond schoolwork.
“This was an opportunity to pull in our community partners, so we went to a lot of Facebook live events such as manners schooling, virtual cooking classes, kind of showing kids how to take some of those items in the house you may not think about and how to make healthy meals,” Suel explained. “We’ve also partnered with virtual bedtime reading so that pertains to our younger generation, our younger students, to kind of encourage reading more during this time. We’ve also looked at prominent leaders in the community to give encouraging messages to our kids over this time to kind of stay focused, share what they’ve done during this quarantine, well QuaranTime is what we call it.”
These programs may have come out of the coronavirus crisis, but Suel said even when life goes back to normal, or whatever normal that may be, MBK will continue to bring online tools to its participants and whoever else needs them.
“This is kind of adapting to our new norm,” he said. “For us, we’ve had to work on what it is, meet kids where they are at.”
“Every young black man should join this program,” said Genesis’ dad Eric Pinkett Jr. “I think this is very important for all of us to band together and be brother’s keepers.”
Genesis is graduating in a few weeks and then headed to Columbus State to learn photography and graphic design. Thanks to all the tools he’s gained from MBK, he feels ready.
“It taught me how to be a man, how to be a great person,” he said. “It taught me everything that I feel I would need to be successful in life. It also taught me stuff that most people don’t think about like etiquette, job management, internships, and interviewing people.”
“I’m very proud of him. I didn’t go to college but seeing him and my other sons do better than me is the best thing I could ever imagine,” Eric Pinkett Jr. said. “You always want your kids to strive more than you so I’m very proud. He’s a super star! I love it!”
For more information on My Brother’s Keeper Village, here is their website: https://www.mbkvillage.org/
You can access their virtual programs via their social media accounts:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MBKVillageColumbus/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mbk_village/